Midpeninsula Free University - Aims and Goals

Aims and Goals

Its original Preamble focused on the criticism of education found in SDS's Port Huron Statement. Later, as its courses and interests expanded to include the full range of '60's counterculture—especially the burgeoning human potential movement—the MFU adopted a revised Preamble reflecting a more expansive vision—a document which one commentator characterized as "a compelling and almost classical manifesto" of the aspirations of 1960's counterculture.

In so far as the MFU had a concrete political philosophy, it was the belief that the counterculture harbored the potential for a new politics—open, more humane, and more creative—one that could lead to a true community and a better society. Realizing that potential would require a radical transformation of personal and interpersonal relationships. Eventually the MFU came to focus on the encounter group and the psychodrama as the primary vehicle for that transformation.